The “REACH” at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which was recently renamed the “Trump Kennedy Center,” is seen in Washington on Tuesday. President Donald Trump’s name being added on December 19, a day after his hand-picked board members voted to rename the venue. Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo
Dec. 31 (UPI) — Of all the extraordinary events of 2025, one of the most amazing and inexplicable is why Donald J. Trump seems to be channeling John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
Despite the exceptional display of bad taste and vulgarity by inserting his name above that of Kennedy’s in renaming the Center for the Performing Arts, that was no accident. For reasons known only to himself, is Trump attempting to remake himself in Kennedy’s image?
Consider the evidence: While the Kennedys made the White House the center of culture with invitations to the most creative members of society in the arts, science and other fields, Trump is doing the same with the new East Wing ballroom. He is trying to bring the cultural splendor of the Kennedys with a Mar-a-Lago twist to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
But, more importantly, while Trump is crafting his actions in line with Making America Great Again and America First, is he stating in a profoundly different, yet eerily similar way, JFK’s promise “to pay any price and bear any burden … to assure the survival of liberty”?
Consider Trump’s most recent use of force in that context with the Kennedy promise.
In Venezuela, as in Vietnam, Trump is trying to protect Americans from the scourge of drugs just as Kennedy intended to stop the equally dangerous spread of communism at the Mekong and not the Mississippi.
While Lyndon Johnson inherited the mantle of assuring liberty, he ordered the retaliatory bombing of North Vietnam in August 1964 to punish Hanoi for a PT boat attack it did not make against two U.S. destroyers. Aside from the United States sinking hapless speedboats, the CIA just attacked an east coast Venezuelan port with drones.
But Venezuela — just as North Vietnam did not launch an attack against U.S. warships — is not sending drugs to America. So why the escalation? And if the Vietnam analogy continues, do we expect to see U.S. special or clandestine forces on the ground in Venezuela much like we conducted a not-so-secret war in Southeast Asia?
There is one huge difference.
President Lyndon Johnson operated under the Tonkin Gulf Resolution that authorized force. Trump does not believe he needs one as commander-in-chief. And Republicans in Congress do not seem inclined to carry out their responsibilities or to enforce the War Powers Act that requires congressional approval for the continued use of military force beyond 60y days. And Trump is not limiting his Kennedy channeling.
Over last weekend, Trump approved cruise missile strikes against Nigeria’s Boko Haram terrorist organization,